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TTI's Urban Mobility Report Flawed, Says Critic

The Texas Transportation Institute just released its 2010 Urban Mobility Report, which is a standard reference in the road-building industry -- and is seriously flawed, says Joe Cortright.

Cortright, working for CEOs for Cities, released an extensive critique of the Urban Mobility Report last year. Looking at the latest report, CEOs for Cities says that many of the same faulty models are still at work. Particularly, they cite TTI's "Travel Time Index" as Travel Time Index as being "built on the unrealistic baseline assumption that travel times should (and could) be no longer during peak periods as during non-peak periods and obscures the effect of land use patterns in creating longer travel distances."

"...by ignoring – and thereby concealing – the effects of longer travel distances in some cities, the UMR continues to get the ranking of cities with the worst travel problems wrong."